Four Paths to Love

I have been doing some thinking lately on the different ways that we seek a Power greater than ourselves.  We all have different concepts of what this Power is as well as a different path to get there.  It is my sincere belief that the path really does not matter.  In fact, you cannot run from this Power because even a path that seemingly goes away from it will eventually bring you back to it.  In my post "One Truth", I write that this power really is Love.  I will not go into this here but one of the reasons why a path away from love will eventually come back to it is because of the dualistic nature of our world.  If we seek after happiness that is tied to our temporal existence, it will end in sadness. This is the design that will give you an opportunity to embrace love when we are able to see this duality.

I perceive that there are four paths to Love, which I believe does not have an opposite.  I started writing this article just thinking about three paths but another one occurred to me, which is the last path.  Admittedly, there is a blending of different paths into one another yet I do perceive them to be separate concepts.  Through these paths, this leads us to eventually being united with Love.

The first path is that Love exists as an Unseen force outside ourselves.  We might think that we will be united with this Love in an afterlife, want to prostrate ourselves before this force or worship it.  On this path, there may be a lot of intellectual dogma or ritual yet it is the rising above all of this that one progresses on this path.

The second path is that Love is omnipresent and, in fact, is so ingrained into reality that one may not perceive it at all.  On this path, one may not even believe in a supernatural and focus more on one's own humanness.  This may be the most surprising path of all.  How can one be united with Love if one really does not even believe in it in the first place?  This is a bit difficult to explain but it is my belief that Reality is a manifestation of Love.  A key part of this path is one must work on developing oneself and also knowing themselves completely.  I see this as a path of continual self-development.

The third path is that Love is inside us.  If we journey deep within ourselves, we find the Source we have been looking for all along.  This is a path of letting go and realizing that we are a part of this Love, a wave on the ocean of Love.  On this path, one will meditate and introspect in order to become conscious of this Power.

The fourth path, and one that is so obvious that I overlooked it when originally writing this, is that Love is in other people.  There is a profound paradox here.  Some people lament that their Deity is not in human form and long to have physical contact with her.  All the while, God is in human form in the hearts of all people.  This is why being of service increases the love in your heart as you are progressing along this path.

All four paths are genuine paths and one is not better than the other.  Certain people may gravitate towards one path or some mixture of them and that is their prerogative to pursue their own bliss.  For me, I think the greatest power is in being conscious of all these different ways to Love and then combining them.  Rather than me proclaiming "my path" as the best, I try to stretch myself to incorporate principles from each path.  If we become open to Love and embrace all ideas (that is, we are open to all religious thoughts), then we are open to growth.  Some truths resonate with you and some do not.  Embrace the ones that do and ignore the ones that do not.  However, if we never allow the truth to enter in the first place, then we do not have the opportunity to grow.

A Higher Consciousness

"In the kingdom of God within every heart lies the perfection of Love, where such dualities do not exist."

As I progress on my spiritual path, one thing that I have been thinking about quite a bit is something that people refer to as a unitive state of consciousness.  I have been introduced to a lot of new concepts and this is one that resonated with me.  When I say "thinking", I mean I have come come to a place of knowing about this state and then have been attempting to integrate that into my life.

There are many different ways, I could define "unitive", so what I mean is that this is a state of consciousness where duality ceases to exist.  There are different levels or planes of truth.  This enables multiple viewpoints to be simultaneously valid, depending on which plane you are operating from.  

Good and bad, right and wrong, and other dualities live in the domain of this world.  In the kingdom of God within every heart lies the perfection of Love, where such dualities do not exist.  It is my view that this Love essence is the building block for the physical reality that we see as well as the core of our being.  In other words, all planes of consciousness collapse down to the God-plane, where there is only Love.

All in this world point towards living from the inner life as the primary reality.  If that is your reality, you see all is perfect as it is.  Even injustice is but a pointer to detach yourself from this world and live in the Spirit.  In fact, even attaching to the positive aspect of duality ensures that we encounter the negative.  The goal is to live without attachment.  All experience in life is but an exercise in detaching from this world and living a life of Love.  

The trick about unitive consciousness is we only get glimpses of it at first.  This happens through meditation or any other centering activity.  My goal is to try to live in a unitive state of consciousness as much as possible.  The challenging aspect of this is that I must act "as if" I am always in this plane, even when I do not feel like it or am really operating from a more base level.  Unitive consciousness seems to also imply something, that I will not explore here, which is uniting with others in one common Consciousness, that is the Christ Consciousness.  This will be explored in future posts.